William Wehrum is the Trump administration’s pick to head the Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Air and Radiation. “Bill,” the first line of his bio at his law firm, Hunton & Williams, boasts, “is well known for his thorough grasp of environmental issues.”

In his Senate confirmation hearing this week, Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., put that claim to the test.

The senatorproduced a large graph for Wehrum from NASA, tracking levels of both greenhouse gas emissions and warming from 1880 through 2005. The lines follow one another fairly closely, including a dramatic upward spike through the latter half of the 20th century and early 21st. “Can you acknowledge,” Merkley asked, “that these lines generally track each other?”

“I’m not familiar with those data. I have no idea what it depicts,” Wehrum answers.

Merkley prods. “But you can see the lines. Do the lines track each other?”

“What’s important, senator, is to know how the data is depicted.”

“Yes it is,” Merkley agrees, “But I’m just asking a question: Can you see those two lines, and do they generally track each other?”

Wehrum does not answer the question, leading Merkley to give up on his graph-related line of inquiry for another. “What we see is this Koch Brother-inspired determination not to acknowledge even the most fundamental facts. … Why should the American people put into an office of significant influence someone who refuses to look at the facts directly that are so important to the health of this planet?”

“As I said, these are complex issues and very important issues.”

So Merkley sought to make it a little less complex, asking Wehrum whether he acknowledges a series of basic scientific facts about recent ecological trends tied to rising temperatures: the increasing acidification of the ocean, growing snowpacks on the cascade mountains, longer fire seasons. Wehrum, again, does not respond, saying of ocean acidification that he’s aware there “is an allegation,” before being cut off.

As Merkley suggests, Wehrum is in all likelihood not as stupid as his testimony would lead you to believe. “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it,” Upton Sinclair famously wrote. Wehrum has represented a number of fossil fuel industry interests, from the American Petroleum Institute, Kinder Morgan, the American Forest & Paper Association, and electric utilities in suing the EPA in fighting a number of regulations, some of which his new job would give him the authority to dismantle.

Among his other cases was one in which he represented industry trade associations in fighting Occupational Safety and Health Administration rules that limited how much silica workers can be exposed to on the job, and another challenging Mine Safety and Health Administration regulations. He also worked over a decade ago to try to block California from implementing more stringent vehicle standards. At another point in his confirmation hearing, Wehrum demurred when asked by California Sen. Kamala Harris if he’d pledge not to try to undo the state’s more stringent air quality regulations.

Notably, Wehrum is a major critic of the endangerment finding, a 2007 Supreme Court ruling that gives the EPA the authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. Peeling back that authority is seen as a prize for many industry groups Wehrum has represented, that have reportedly been miffed EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt hasn’t moved faster to dismantle it.

Having been at the EPA during the Bush years in the same job, Wehrum might be even better-positioned than Pruitt to take the endangerment finding head on, all with the backing of agency opponents and outsiders now running one of the nation’s top regulators. He’s expected, as well, to act as a kind of bridge between career administrators and Pruitt’s team, helping smooth the path for his boss’s anti-regulatory agenda.

But he has to get confirmed first.

“No one can look at what is happening on the planet and see that there is nothing happening unless you’re deliberately determined to ignore that information,” Merkley concluded Wednesday. “And that makes you, really quite frankly, unacceptable to serve in this capacity.”

Top photo: William Wehrum appears before the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works to testify on his nomination as the assistant administrator for the Office of Air and Regulation at the Environmental Protection Agency on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. on Wednesday, Oct. 4, 2017.

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Global warming is like a fever that permits the earth to heal itself…. and the human species is the disease it needs to eliminate. On a geological timescale of 10 billion years, the human era will be an almost invisible blip on the chart. We should all embrace global warming !

In this clip, Wehrum is never even given a chance to speak. Here we have two supposedly civilized adult men that are incapable of having a true conversation thanks to the likes of Senator Merkley. This is not a conversation or a debate, this is an interrogation and the lack of maturity that Senator Merkley reveals to the audience is disgusting.

I don’t mean to be contrary, but it should be noted that the possibility of having a ‘conversation’ or ‘debate’ is sometimes precluded by the very nature of confirmation hearings. While they may often involve civil dialogue, that is not a mandatory requirement: the purpose of the hearing is for the Senate to fulfil its constitutional obligation to vet the candidate and ensure that they will adequately perform the duties entailed by their prospective role. As such, a Senator’s line of questioning may very well border on the adversarial, as has happened above with Sen. Merkley.

I don’t mean to be contrary, but it should be noted that the possibility of having a ‘conversation’ or ‘debate’ is sometimes precluded by the very nature of confirmation hearings. While most may involve civil dialogue, this is not a mandatory requirement: the purpose of these confirmation hearings is to allow the Senate to fulfil its constitutional obligation of vetting prospective candidates so as to determine whether they are adequate of character to perform the duties entailed by their role. As such, a Senator’s line of questioning may very well border on adversarial towards fulfilling this obligation, as seen above with Sen. Merkley.

It should be a fundamental requirement that people serving in government agencies strongly support the work that the agencies are supposed to do. Anyone like this scum who worked for industries or businesses whose work is contrary to the work of the agency to which the person is nominated should be automatically ineligible, as should anyone who has done any work contrary to the mission of the agency or even made remarks so contrary, as long as those remarks can be verified.

It’s quite telling that our system is so fucked up that it would even consider allowing so-called regulators to be people who don’t want to regulate. This society is hopeless absent major and radical change.

God, we need more ethanol and fracking unless of course we can invade more countries for the rare earth minerals and metals that fuel our electronics, defense and clean energy industries. Just believe! (In recycling solar panels)

All one needs to do in today’s political nomination process is to state exactly what Wehrum did …how can saying nothing get your nomination defeated, it can’t! These republican nominations do just this and they get appointed …last supreme court nominee? Elected!

The Intercept may be unaware that numerous studies confirm that general circulation models used to create future possible scenarios, are problematic in that they are running too hot. There is still no scientific proof at the 95% level of significance that human CO2 has had any impact on hurricanes, tornadoes, droughts or floods. There are also many positive impacts of increased CO2 that have been ignored because they do not fit the CO2 hysteria narrative. Finally, a great deal of human vulnerability to climate has been created by human land use change and this also has been downplayed by those only interested in perpetuating CO2 hysteria.

On the political side we now have 20/20 hindsight that the Kyoto Accord turned out to be a complete failure in reducing human CO2. While Political hacks like Al Gore, NGOs and banks cashed in on the hysteria created over man made CO2, it was a non-solution with a FAILED OUTCOME. The Paris Climate Accord looks to be no better than Kyoto and there is no compelling reason to join except for money to be made by political hacks, NGOs and banks who stand to cash in financially again.

The CO2 endangerment finding was based on bad science and hysteria pushed by green NGOs and it needs to be reanalyzed as most of the EPA analyses are outdated. The desire to push political agendas will likely hinder truthful analysis but until an honest reassessment can be done, we will be subjected to the dog and pony show that continues to play out in congress intended to impress voters.

Based on Wehrum’s history listed in the article and in the comments, chances are I would disagree with him. But I sure would like to hear his point of view or arguments so that I could actually think about it. I hate these Congressional hearings where they make a guy sit in a chair, ask rapid fire questions and don’t let him answer. Would Wehrum get in trouble if he said, “I want to answer you. Are you gonna let me answer completely or not?” Then and only then, would one have the information to refute or perhaps agree. Moreover, this science is settled stuff has to stop, whether the topic is vaccines or climate change. I am in a scientific field and I have been exposed to the information and data that supports climate change. But honestly, I haven’t had the time or opportunity to hear the scientific arguments against climate change. I read about 20-40 pages of the Heartland Institute’s response to the IPCC reports – and admittedly, couldn’t get much further, because it was clearly propaganda based upon the tone and the wording. But seriously, I would like to know more about these solar flare arguments or what not. What are the arguments anyway?

Earth scientists are open to any new intelligent, informed theories about the subject, but we just haven’t had any new ones for a long time now, and all the known arguments against have all been worked out pretty thoroughly.

Yes, earth scientist here (I share some of my experiences in earth science downthread a bit). We have a saying among earth scientists (there are several versions): “99.99% of earth scientists agree that we are experiencing anthropogenic global climate change driven by global warming and 99.99% have no idea why that percentage is so low.”

I joined earth science in 1995, and at that time there were still a few intelligent, informed theories that pointed to a need for better explanations here and there. Those areas of investigation have been pretty thoroughly explored by now – in fact, for quite a long time now – though there’s still a lot we need to know.

“I am in a scientific field and I have been exposed to the information and data that supports climate change. But honestly, I haven’t had the time or opportunity to hear the scientific arguments against climate change.”

That’s because there literally aren’t any. Don’t be fooled by anyone telling you it’s so complex, because the situation we find ourselves in is simple enough that even a 4th grader should easily grasp it and a 10th grader should be able to get a 100% score on all this without trying hard. Here goes, simplified only a tiny bit so everybody gets it:

The earth is habitable by life as we know it because, among other reasons, its temperature is stable within a particular range. That stability in temperature comes about in large part because of a balance of inbound and outbound solar radiation (known as Earth’s Radiation Budget). Earth’s atmosphere is transparent to inbound solar radiation in the form of visible light. It eventually reaches the surface and strikes land, water, or some object. Some of this radiation strikes a reflective surface such as ice or snow pack and is reflected back into space. Other radiation is absorbed and heats objects and is re-emitted at a different, longer wavelength we know infrared. However, Earth’s atmosphere is not fully transparent to infrared wavelengths primarily due to molecules in the air containing carbon. The degree to which the atmosphere is opaque or translucent to infrared depends on the carbon content. Humanity has discovered vast stores of fuels containing carbon and when these fuels are burned, the combustion releases that previously stored carbon to the atmosphere. Thus, humanity is making the atmosphere more opaque and less transparent to infra red and is thereby trapping more heat that otherwise might have radiated back out into space. And, thus, humanity is causing global warming.

That’s the basic situation. Simple, and there’s no good place for anyone to really argue with it which is why there aren’t any good arguments otherwise.

To be very clear, there has always been carbon cycling through our atmosphere – it’s carbon’s “short cycle.” The problem isn’t “cow farts” – because the methane so released was already in the short cycle; the problem is taking previously sequestered carbon and adding to what was already in the short cycle.

An additional problem is that Earth’s atmosphere and ocean interact chemically and all that additional carbon is changing the pH of the ocean in a process called ocean acidification. That’s causing a lot of sea creatures to not be able to form their shells and could lead to a collapse of oceanic food chains world-wide. (Wide-spread coral death is being caused by a different effect, just merely the heating of the ocean itself.)

“I read about 20-40 pages of the Heartland Institute’s response to the IPCC reports – and admittedly, couldn’t get much further, because it was clearly propaganda based upon the tone and the wording.”

Yes, that’s understandable because all they have left is propaganda; all the (previously) valid arguments have already been made and sorted out.

…BTW, I’ve never seen, heard, or read any “solar flare” argument that made any sense whatsoever. Blaming global warming on solar activity has long ago been ruled out.

I have a kinda different take on this. We are always told how the Greatest Country that can ever be! But I see us making the same mistakes over and over; Name a few. Prohibition of alcohol caused a great increase in crime, let’s prohibit some other drugs. A warplane fires on a group of people, that are judged non-combatants. Circles back around to fire on the first respondeners . Do we punish the people that did the shooting? No. Do we punish the people that gave the orders? No. WE JAIL THE PERSON THAT TOLD US IT HAPPENED! (And in the same time period, a high officer tells his girlfriend real secrets, to make his story read better. Does he go to jail?) And in defense of “democracy” we sell a bunch of weapons to a dictatorship to defend themselves from the country that just had election.
No matter what the temperature gets to the earth will survive. But if this is the best mankind can do, should we try to save mankind?

I wonder sometimes if people on Venus a billion years back might have made the same mistake. The heating of the planet has left it completely resurfaced, so none of the works of an ancient civilization remain … unless maybe they left a handful of puny landers on miscellaneous heavenly bodies for us to find. I will resist the temptation to paste the Isaiah quote about Venus, almost surely out of context…

It certainly is awesome that people seem to be smart enough to figure out that there’s no perfect proof that there is climate change caused by mankind… Even on a website dedicated to the global warming cause.
as far as this particular article goes, it’s obvious that bill was getting badgered. Very smart of him not to agree. Many people know that in these kind of hearings, there is a huge “gotcha” factor. If he had agreed, then the senator would have said that he must believe in climate change.

So, you’re another paid shill for fossil fuel interests or are you just a propaganda victim?

Here, let me spell it out for you in terms that anyone who passed High School should easily grasp:

The earth is habitable by life as we know it because, among other reasons, its temperature is stable within a particular range. That stability in temperature comes about in large part because of a balance of inbound and outbound solar radiation (known as Earth’s Radiation Budget). Earth’s atmosphere is transparent to inbound solar radiation in the form of visible light – we usually call it daylight, familiar with it? It eventually reaches the surface and strikes land, water, or some object. Some of this radiation strikes a reflective surface such as ice or snow pack and is reflected back into space. Other radiation is absorbed and heats objects – like your car left in the parking lot on a clear day – and is re-emitted at a different, longer wavelength we know infrared. However, Earth’s atmosphere is not fully transparent to infrared wavelengths primarily due to molecules in the air containing carbon. The degree to which the atmosphere is opaque or translucent to infrared depends on the carbon content. Humanity has discovered vast stores of fuels containing carbon and when these fuels are burned – you know, like in your car! – the combustion releases that previously stored carbon to the atmosphere – such as from your exhaust pipe. Thus, humanity is making the atmosphere more opaque and less transparent to infra red and is thereby trapping more heat that otherwise might have radiated back out into space. And, thus, humanity is causing global warming.

That’s the basic situation. Simple, and there’s no good place for anyone to really argue with it which is why there aren’t any good arguments otherwise.

To be very clear, there has always been carbon cycling through our atmosphere – it’s carbon’s “short cycle.” The problem isn’t “cow farts” – because the methane so released was already in the short cycle; the problem is taking previously sequestered carbon and adding to what was already in the short cycle. You can’t keep adding carbon to the atmosphere indefinitely without it building up and that’s what has happened; we’ve been dumping carbon into the atmosphere for long enough and in such large volumes that now we’re seeing real problems from it.

I have been able to add a third line of human life longevity for the same period 1880 to 2005 on the graph the senator produced as scientific evidence. The result is spectacular as the life expectancy of the global human species, follows exactly the other lines. The scientific conclusion would have to be that global greenhouse gas emissions and global warming have had a beneficial effect on the longevity of our species.
Can the senator acknowledge that these lines generally track each other ?

An ordinary citizen is free to believe in global warming. But a scientist is held to a higher standard. Any sort of preconception can potentially influence a scientist’s judgment, and cause them to miss or misinterpret scientific evidence. So a scientist must maintain a pristine state of pure ignorance, so their brain doesn’t filter out relevant data.

A true scientist will always maintain that they know nothing. This often confuses lay persons, who have been taught to believe that knowledge is desirable. But beware of anyone who claims to have the answers; that’s the sign of a charlatan.

Another great one there Ben. It took a lot of comments but I finally figured out who’s sentence structure your’s remind me of. It’s an old-time graffitti writer named Collossus of Roads. He’s interviewed in the film ‘Who is Bozo Texino’

I’ve lived through 13 presidents and I never thought it could get this bad. I fear for my grandchildren because all the power is being foisted onto selfish Eddie Haskells whose ambitions have nothing at all to do with the common good

What’s Wehrum really saying here? He’s like a deer which freezes when it’s caught in a car’s headlights. Then, I could care less what the f**k you think, Senator. You or any of the other asshole liberals on this committee. But I’ll sit here and fake being polite so I can get the damn job and the nice GS salary that goes with it.

Besides, if I don’t answer, what the hell are you gonna do? ARREST ME? Charge me with CONTEMPT? That’s a f*****g joke.

That’s one way to put it, but, well, to crib Benito, I’d say that this job interview was a well chosen test of his skills. Some people aren’t well cut out to feign complete inability to see facts directly in front of their faces. Those people have a future set aside for them on the unemployment line and steadily decreasing Medicaid. But the person who remains focused on the big picture and cannot be swayed by facts under any circumstances has a chance to take a position in government.

Listen folks I know your natural backfire effect will kick in here but “climate change” “global warming”.. is NOT SCIENCE. It is theory. In order to be a science it needs to meet 3 criteria:

Be observable
Be repeatable
Be testable

If it were to make all 3 of these there would be no debate. Do humans affect our environment? Yes on a micro level. We pollute our environment. Areas of high development like major cities are warmer, but its negligible and doesn’t effect surrounding undeveloped areas.

When you understand the diff between “just a theory” and scientific theory then you can talk about science. Do you know what a null and alternative hypothesis is? Can you name a single statistical test or even what central tendency is? Can you describe the carbon cycle for us? Do you know what modeling is? No? Didn’t think so. Why do you think you can argue with 99% of the world’s scientist, most of whom have Doctorate’s in there fields? Is because you learned in a 6th grade science class you prob made a C in that the Earth occasionally goes through warm/cool cycles? How about because some Repub politician with big oil $ in his pocket and 0.00 background or understanding of science told you so?

It is the author that doesn’t understand science. Simply being shown a graph without scale or data points is childish. His response shows he actually understands statistics, unlike most snowflakes. No mathematician under oath would have said anything differently.

I read a more disturbing thing about the EPA today … they covered for Monsanto during the Obama years.

” Jess Rowland, formerly the deputy division director within the health effects division of EPA’s Office of Pesticide Programs (OPP), who bragged to Monsanto that he “should get a medal” if could kill the ATSDR glyphosate review.”

Moral of the story: Snowflake journalists don’t care about the integrity of the EPA, the environment, health … they only feign concern for these things to cover for their intense rage they feel regarding a racketeering war-criminal, Hillary Clinton, who lost the election.

Too much FOX news and alt-right Youtube podcasts will rot your mind. Here’s a collection of facts on global warming and climate science from the past 150 years, courtesy of American Institute of Physics:https://history.aip.org/climate/index.htm
Milestones in Climate Science, Spencer Weart

1824 Fourier calculates that the Earth would be far colder if it lacked an atmosphere.

1859 Tyndall discovers that some gases block infrared radiation. He suggests that changes in the concentration of greenhouse gases could bring climate change.

1896 Arrhenius publishes the first calculation of global warming from human emissions of CO2.

1930s A global warming trend since the late nineteenth century is reported. Milankovitch proposes orbital changes as the cause of ice ages.

1938 Callendar argues that CO2 greenhouse global warming is under way, reviving interest in the question.

1945 The U.S. Office of Naval Research begins generous funding of many fields of science, some of which happen to be useful for understanding climate change.

1956 Phillips produces a somewhat realistic computer model of the global atmosphere. Plass calculates that adding CO2 to the atmosphere will have a significant effect on the radiation balance.

1957 Revelle finds that CO2 produced by humans is not readily absorbed by the oceans.

1958 Telescope studies show a greenhouse effect raises the temperature of the atmosphere of Venus far above the boiling point of water.

1971 An SMIC conference of leading scientists reports a danger of rapid and serious global climate change caused by humans, and calls for an organized research effort.

1972 Ice cores and other evidence shows big climate shifts in the past between relatively stable modes in the space of a thousand years or so.

1974 Serious droughts since 1972 increase concern about climate; cooling from aerosols is suspected to be as likely as warming; journalists talk of a new ice age.

1975 Manabe and his collaborators produce complex but plausible computer models that show a temperature rise of several degrees for doubled CO2.

1976 Studies find that CFCs (1975) and methane and ozone (1976) can make a serious contribution to the greenhouse effect. Deep-sea cores show a dominating influence from 100,000-year Milankovitch orbital changes, which emphasizes the role of feedbacks.

1977 Scientific opinion tends to converge on global warming as the biggest climate risk in the next century.

1979 A U.S. National Academy of Sciences report finds it highly credible that doubling CO2 will bring about global warming of 1.5°C – 4.5°C. (*This represents the scientific consensus on the issue ever since; without the fossil fuel industry’s PR pushback, this would have been the point where it was clear humans had to stop burning fossil fuels or accept severe climate disruption).

1981 Hansen and others show that sulfate aerosols can significantly cool the climate, a finding that raises confidence in models showing future greenhouse warming.

1982 Greenland ice cores reveal dramatic temperature oscillations in the space of a century in the distant past. Stong global warming since mid-1970s is reported; 1981 was the warmest year on record.

1985 Ramanathan and his collaborators announce that global warming may come twice as fast as expected, from a rise of methane and other trace greenhouse gases.

1988 Ice-core and biology studies confirm that living ecosystems make climate feedback by way of methane, which could accelerate global warming. The International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is established.

1989 Fossil-fuel and other U.S. industries form the Global Climate Coalition to tell politicians and the public that climate science is too uncertain to justify action. (*Exxon internal documents later show Exxon knew that global warming projections were good science in 1978)

1990 The first IPCC report says the world has been warming and future warming seems likely.

1991 Mt. Pinatubo erupts; climate scientists predict a cooling pattern, which will validate (*by 1995) computer models of aerosol effects (*and of the water vapor feedback effect). Studies from 55 million years ago show a possiblity that the eruption of methane from the seabed could intensify enormous self-sustained warming.

1992 The study of ancient climates reveals climate sensitivity in the same range as that predicted independently by computer models.

1993 Greenland ice cores suggest that great climate changes (at least on a regional scale) can occur in the space of a single decade.

1995 The second IPCC report detects a ‘signature’ of human-caused greenhouse-effect warming; it declares that serious warming is likely in the coming century. Reports of the breakup of Antarctic ice shelves and other signs of actual current warming in polar regions begin to affect public opinion.

1998 A “Super El Niño” causes weather disasters and the warmest year on record (approximately matched by 2005 and 2007). Borehole data confirm an extraordinary warming trend. Qualms about arbitrariness in computer models diminish as teams model ice-age climate and dispense with special adjustments to reproduce current climate.

2000 The Global Climate Coalition dissolves as many corporations grapple with the threat of warming, but the oil lobby convinces the U.S. administration to deny a problem exists.

2001 Debate effectively ends among all but a few scientists. Warming is observed in ocean basins; the match with computer models gives a clear signature of greenhouse-effect warming.

2003 Numerous observations raise concern that collapse of ice sheets (in West Antarctica and Greenland) can raise sea levels faster than most had believed. A deadly summer heat wave in Europe accelerates the divergence between European and U.S. public opinion.

2007 The level of CO2 in the atmosphere reaches 392 ppm. The mean global temperature a five-year average) is 14.5°C, the warmest in hundreds, perhaps thousands, of years.

2015 and 2016 are the warmest years on record. Atmospheric CO2 is now 410 ppm.

So, we’re in the pipeline for continued fossil-fueled global warming for the next 50 years, and the sooner fossil fuels are eliminated from the energy mix, the better. Even if that’s accomplished, massive infrastructure investments will still be needed to deal with even current levels of extreme weather, droughts and flooding.

I’ll question one of the older claims about CO2 by asking you to please explain from where and how the CO2 on Venus came to create this greenhouse effect. There is no Exxon Mobile there or any other life to produce it.

The only scientific explanation for its source I’ve read stated that it was baked out of the rock on the planet’s surface. This means that Venus had to be very hot long before the CO2 levels produced any greenhouse effect, if there is one there.

Balderdash. The answer is simple; vulcanism. It’s not “baked out of the rocks”, it’s expelled in great quantities in volcanic eruptions. Earth happened to catch a bit more water from comments which helps explain our circumstance versus Venus.

Thanks for posting that summary – its’ a good one. … In 1995 I joined U.C. Berkeley to lead an interdisciplinary study into global climate change. I worked for a Professor who was the lead investigator (and who later would win the Touring Award), and I ran the team of 43 people, one of whom was already a Turing Award winner, and the rest were scattered among 6 disciplines. My job was to get us all working together as a coherent team so I focused on interoperability.

Due to that work, I managed to become co-Investigator on a related project where I was partnered with someone at JPL. I was visiting him one day and he observed the time, confirmed we were otherwise done for the day and asked me if I’d like to join him for an important meeting about to be given across campus. We went, and it was the very most memorable two hours or so of my working life. … The subject: Global Ice.

It turned out that the Global Ice people were set to have their biannual Primary Investigator’s meeting to discuss funding priorities for the coming year but that talk was being coopted because there was a chance opportunity for the community to instead hear from a researcher who was studying one of the largest glaciers on the planet. It’s supported on land and flows into the ocean on what’s more or less a continual slope from higher lands down into the sea. It averages more than 100 miles wide, is just over 1100 miles long and has an average thickness of around two miles. It represents a fairly large percentage of all terrestrially supported ice. 6 years previous to this talk, the speaker had gotten funding to fly over the glacier and drop a few hundred – I don’t recall the count – little weather stations that collected data on as many things as possible with radio reporting of data. He’d been collecting data all that time and what was new and exciting was that the most recent results were that the whole glacier was moving into the sea faster than before, and also that the lower portion of the glacier was moving much faster than the upper portion. In fact, the glacier as a whole had moved about as much in the last 6 months as in the whole of the previous 6 years!

We don’t often think of water ice (or any ice) as being elastic, but the immediate concern was when and where would the elastic limit be reached and the glacier break in two. When that happens, the lower portion will be free to pick up speed and slide into the sea even faster. And when we’re talking about that much ice, we’re talking about a LOT of sea level rise, all at once, and it will come at the speed of sound in sea water…

What was even more memorable about this was that our Master of Ceremonies was an old hand and knew most if not all the world’s experts in ice by name and by what they do. So, after the speaker’s presentation, he walked us through, as a group, what we know and don’t know about ice, globally, and he started by calling out names and asking things like, “George, you’ve studied this, can you please remind us all what the total known variation in global sea level has been?” (Something a little over 800 feet, as I recall.) Then, “Sally, I think your team has the very latest data on just how far from the top we are right now – can you share that with us, please?” (about 186′, as I recall)… And so it went. And what I learned that I had been clueless about is that we’re in a LOT more risk of huge jumps in sea level than most people appreciate.

One case in point that remains vividly in my mind is that someone had been studying the volume of ice supported by land that was at an altitude very close to sea level and which would melt (virtually instantly) when sea level might rise a tiny amount, thus joining the sea in a positive feedback loop. It turns out that if we get as little as one foot or so, we’ll actually get more like ten feet of sea level rise due to this low-lying ice. In particular, there’s a heck of a lot of it in Patagonia, South America…

We were then treated to a bit of an informal survey where the EmCee walked us through 20 questions or so about what the opinion of the world’s Ice experts was on various issues such as how much sea level rise how fast – of the form, “hands up how many think it’ll be over 30′ in this century … OK, now by 2050? …” and so on. This sparked a debate between an old guy and a young one, the old guy saying it would take centuries and the young one saying the old guy was just spouting dogmatic crap because nobody really knows because the granularity of the emperical data available just isn’t that precise – in many data sets, he pointed out, it’s hard enough to tell the difference between 100 years and 500 years, and if some change actually took only 5 years, it’d be neigh unto impossible to tell from the available evidence… The young guy won the argument; the vast majority agreed with him. … I think virtually nobody (out of maybe 120 Primary Investigators) thought there’d be less than 30′ before the year 2100, and maybe a little over half said at least 20′ by 2050… This event happened in 2000 or 2001, as I recall.

No time for more now, but thanks again for your great contribution to this thread.

You’re an idiot who obviously voted for Trump. More Americans were killed under Bush than during Hillary’s time as Sec. Of State.
Facts are facts. This guy is not an environmentalist and should not be anywhere near a position in the EPA.
Go stick your head back in the sand.

I think it is you who are the snowflake (if I understand a snowflake getting emotionally hurt). The question was do the lines on the graph track. It
is not an admission of a correlation, just a question that requires an observation of two lines on a chart. He could have answered it easily but saying the lines track, however I disagree that they describe the conclusion of a cause and effect as annotated. The answer is yes the line track. It is a fourth grade question. Did ocean acidity levels rise? yes or no? If the nominee is the expert he could have said, yes, but. Or No. Or I don’t know. He just did not want to show he is paid and operated by folks who have no financial interest in promoting the global warming claim. He should be honest. Don’t you want unbiased scientists to lead our nation’s scientific agencies?

Another whining sniveling leftist who after almost a year can’t believe America voted for Trump. Instead of being a whining obstructionist get on board. Leftist policies brought us to the brink of insolvency, war, massive civil unrest, division and a world that can’t trust us. Hillary was going to see all that thru. Trump wasn’t my choice but I would vote for a head of iceberg lettuce before I cast my vote for an elitist criminal who isn’t welcome in many countries and is widely regarded as a self serving corrupt money laundering hack.

Actually, actual leftists would not have bailed out Wall Street or gone into Iraq (Thus no insolvency), not have threatened Syria or Russia (war), have investigated law enforcement (less division)- and all these would make the world trust us. I share your opinion on Clinton- but I had no trust in Trump either.

The further inaction of these fools picked to lead the administrations, supposedly, to protect the citizens from the toxins spewed by industry will increase the likelihood of global extinction of Earth’s creatures, humans included. One could not pick better imbeciles to ensure utter destruction. The coral reefs will be dead in 20 years. That’s one third of all the ocean’s ecosystem that supports all the coastal fish that humans depend on to live. Almost every sea bird and smaller fish have plastic in their stomachs. Humans too have up to five pounds of plastic in their bodies. No one wants to listen, fine, just don’t be too surprised when 70% of humans die off due to lack of food or clean water because you didn’t, or couldn’t face hard facts. The criminals poisoning all Earth’s creatures should be in prison not on boards protecting Earth’s creatures, come on start facing the REAL facts for a change.

No. It would show that he can tell the truth about two lines following each other. He refused to do even that, because if he agreed to that proposition, he would have to agree to other equally obvious conclusions. You are absurd.

Someday soon, I hope, these Warmer cultists will be embarrassed to wave their fake science hockey stick graphs. Snowflakes like Merkley are tools of their favored Big Green industry and some not so green industries just as most all political parasites are.

Lovers of the administrative state including Merkley are squealing like little piggy’s because they won’t be allowed to use the BS endangerment ruse to increase their corporate backers wealth. Trump put an end to that devious thinking and action when he pulled out of the Paris accords and scrapped Obama’s job killing and rate increasing CPP. Obama imposed a foreign mandate on the US by using the endangerment club to beat back democratic review which is what makes NWO globalists smile, but they are weeping now.

Look at it this way: what is the worst thing that can happen if we recognize AGW as a fact? We develop renewable clean sources of energy and associated high tech jobs? OK. We extend the amount of time before we run out of fossil fuels? Alright. A few billionaires lose their shirts? Won’t break my heart.

Now what’s the worst that will happen if we continue this stupid reliance on powering the planet using fermented dinosaurs and reverting back to pre-EPA levels of pollution? An uninhabitable planet? Oh, OK, guess we will just populate another one…

And, even if CO2 has no connection with global warming, there are plenty of reasons we should want to reduce fossil fuel emissions.
– Many countries with large quantities of fossil fuels are non-democratic and dictatorial, and some are known backers of terror. (Such as Saudi Arabia.)
-Fossil fuels are not only used to run cars, trucks, planes, etc. They are also used for things like plastics, asphalt, chemicals, etc. Why not use them for those valuable purposes instead of burning them?
-Fossil fuels are non-replaceable. Once they are gone, that’s it. We are not going to have large quantities of organic matter buried under millions of years of heat and pressure (Or a global flood, if you are a creationist) anytime soon.
-Fossil fuels cost money. Sun and wind and water are free.

Yes! The NWO-loving, Soros-funded, Bilderburg-brown-nosing, Protocols of Zion reading, evil globalist snowflakes! Climate change is THEIR devious master-plan to force America to give up her guns/god/freedom/rights and submit to international socialist greenness!

While you’re free to believe whatever fantasies you want, unfortunately reality doesn’t work that way. You might be in for a confusing and unpleasant time when reality catches up and kicks your arse.

The highlighted text quotes the group, Legal 500, which characterizes Wehrum as, “…one of the finest Clean Air Act attorneys in the country.”

Of course, what they really mean is he’s one of the best anti-Clean Air Act attorneys in the country, with a history of successfully stopping or mitigating clean air legislation and other environmental laws. That’s a point of pride to this crowd; a reason to hire him.

What’s embarrassing is how normal this behavior has become. All the faux-outrage surrounding these situations reveals that those with the privilege and the right to live in utter ignorance may continue to do so. All those privileged losers pretend to question each other, putting on a fine spectacle for the people, so they can appear like all the other “flawed people” out there.

The “progressives” pay lip service and still collect their checks, just like the Dems have, just how the Repubs keep doing. When they get called out on their B.S. they just claim, “I’m only human, made a mistake, sorry guys won’t happen again!” Everyone takes their word for it. Well, by everyone, I mean everyone who also identifies with those losers: the ignorant white people seduced by capitalist white supremacist patriarchy. Everyone else knows the B.S. game of oppression they live under. It’s the oppressors, who are truly brainwashed and trapped in this mess, they continue to ignore everyone around them trying to help them get out.

Nah. Let MotherNature do it— a few more Harvey’s and Irma types. Then the China drawing line at not producing combustion engines deadline, and the world moves ahead. Not upgrading the US rail system is a crime.